Absolute One-Step Photography

• Author: Ronald K. Fierstein
• Profession: Lawyer on the team of litigators from the prestigious patent law firm of Fish & Neave
• Pages: 105-119

105

CHAPTER 6

ABSOLUTE ONE-STEP

PHOTOGRAPHY

Back in 1943, Edwin H. Land had a dream. “I can imagine a camera that

is simple and easy to use,” he told William McCune. “You simply look

through the viewfinder and compose your picture and push the shutter

release and out comes the finished dry photograph in full color.”1 As it

turned out, this camera and film of Land’s dream would be easier to con-

jure than to create.

Polaroid’s initial one-step camera and film system was a revolution-

ary advance in the amateur photography world, yet it employed a rela-

tively large and heavy camera, and the film had to be manipulated. After

snapping the shutter, the film was left in the camera to develop. The pho-

tographer timed the processing and then, at the designated moment, the

final photograph was peeled away from the negative and other parts of the

film unit, which were left in the camera to be discarded. As amazing for its

day as it may have been, this system clearly fell short of realizing Land’s

ideal. Still, by the mid-1960s, the evolution of Polaroid’s initial one-step

system had progressed. In September 1960, a new black-and-white film

was introduced that cut the processing time to ten seconds. Polacolor

film had finally brought color to one-step photography. For the first time,

instant pictures could be processed out of the camera with the replacement

of the roll format with “pack film” that had two opaque film supports. In

this new variation of the one-step process, once the shutter was snapped,

the entire sandwich of negative and positive was pulled out of the cam-

era. As before, the photographer would time the process before the film

sandwich was peeled apart to reveal the image. The used negative and

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